Here are the pictures of our rather improvised trip to Kyushu just after the earthquake in March. It was unexpected because we didn’t plan to go anywhere around that time March, being not especially good for weather and the atmosphere was kind of peculiar. In Kyushu, People were going about their regular business like anywhere else in Japan, but the fear was openly coming from the foreigners that we could see walking in the streets. Some came and talk to us explaining that they had left Tokyo without really knowing where to go, not wanting to leave the country or going back to their own…

This time was rather stressful so we decided to take the bullet train, shinkansen from Shin Kobe to get to Hakata, the city nearby Fukuoka in the North part of Kyushu island. It was my first time taking it, and it was quite nice and fast with a speed of about 149 to 186 mph, you can’t really see the landscape of the West stretch but we were in Kyushu un 2 hours!

As usual, we walked into the city after a 2 hours train ride. We visited temples and shrines. The city of Fukuoka is very pleasant and easy to navigate since it has a subway and private train lines that would take around.

Tocho-ji has the largest wooden Buddha in Japan.The carving of the statue started in 1988 and it took 4 years to finish. The statue is 36 feet in height and 30 tons in weight. Besides the statue is a treasure exhibition hall that you can reach by following a path in the dark with a rope against the wall, pretty scary stuff!

The culinary speciality of Fukuoka is ramen. This dish is well known outside of Japan and you can find them most of the time as cup noodles…here there are part of regular people’s life and especially students and in a hurry business men. Indeed the bowl of soup is usually ready in about 10 min and are quite cheap ($10 to $12). As you can guess, nothing is better than fresh ramen, In Fukuoka, the speciality is called Tonkotsu ramen. So what’s the difference? All is the broth I think, this one is made from pork and is quite opaque and white. They are served with a soft boiled egg, thin slices of pork, crushed garlic, ginger and dried seaweed. It’s real good! While we were in town we ate ramen everyday if it was only for Sam, he would have had them at every meal ;-). We tried the ramen stadium, a shopping mall floor full of ramen restaurant and here is what we got:

All this is letting me speechless. I am sorry I have not being updated the blog recently… Luckily, Kobe was not hurt by the earthquake or the tsunami. Now, we are living day to day in the wait of news from the power plants in Fukushima. Thousands of people disappeared in the NE part of the country and the survivors are left with nothing. People are making donation or sending non perishable goods, but it seems not enough. The news go from really bad to “it’s OK’ depending where you read.It’s getting harder to stay calm and keep a clear way of what to do next. A lot of foreigners have left the country or have gone South to Kyushu or Okinawa. This is what we will do Friday, if I can buy a tickets today. Flights to Europe or America are either sold out or way too expensive between $1500 to $5000 depending on the dates you are looking at. I will do my best to update but can’t really promise anything. Thanks for reading and posting comments on my blog!